LA> "In the complex course of its evolution, life exhibits a LA> remarkable contrast to the tendency expressed in the Second LA> Law of Thermodynamics. Where the Second Law expresses an LA> irreversible progression towards increased entropy and LA> disorder, life evolves continually higher levels of order. LA> The still more remarkable fact is that the evolutionary LA> drive to greater and greater order also is irreversible. LA> Evolution does not go backward." LA> LA> (J.H. Rush. The Dawn of Life (New York: Signet, 1962), p. LA> 35 - ref: Scientific[sic] Creationism, p. 40)Actually, the quote may well be accurate. The amusing irony is, of course, that it says absolutely nothing inimical to the reality of evolution. Read it again. Rush (of whom I have no knowledge) is simply saying that evolution APPEARS to behave 'contrary' to the 2LoT, but nowhere says it isn't happening. Now, given that this quote is almost forty years old, and coupled with the fairly obvious con- clusion that Rush isn't any sort of scientist, really doesn't mean very much one way or the other. The fact that Appleton seems to perceive some sort of support for his ...er, 'position' from what Rush has said is in itself an indictment of Laurie's intellectual bankruptcy. And, on another re-reading of it myself, I note one particularly nebulous portion: "evolution does not go *backward*"...
Evolution, of course, has no 'direction'. There is no 'forward' nor 'backward'. Things change according to the forces affecting them. Laurie's [ethnocentric?]... [humanocentric?]... (I don't know how his mind works... it appears not to work at all) view of the world and its inhabitants is so abysmally lacking in scientific fact he makes no sense at all.